Friday, March 27, 2015

Adam McFadden wants to lead the Rochester Housing Authority. Again.
Never mind the fact that he isn't qualified for it.
Or that he was bounced out for conflict of interest after a few months on the job. And $30,000 later.
The conflict is that he is a city councilman for the southwest district.
He still is, and is running for re election to that office.
McFadden claims that he was told by somebody in HUD in Washington DC they doubted the opinion of the Buffalo office that there was a conflict of interest.
McFadden made this claim in a letter to RHA when applying for the lead position.
The letter hasn't been released for popular consumption.
Nor has the name of the person or persons who supposedly told McFadden this.
McFadden might have saved his ink and paper.
H. Todd Bullard, the board's employment counsel, said "Adam's application will not be considered and letters will go out to five other applicants who arguably have potential conflicts."
That should be an end to it.
But it probably won't be.
Not until Mayor Warren puts in her two cents.
Until then, you have got to admire McFadden's nerve. Or gall.
He ought to put his money where his mouth is and lawyer up.
John Parrinello is always looking for high profile clients.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The City of Rochester suspended Deputy Director of Emergency Communications Steve Cusenz without pay for five days Wednesday after an internal investigation determined he had posted racially offensive comments on Facebook.
It was never stated what they were, or what they related to.
It was sufficient that James Smith, the mayor's director of communications, deemed them so.
Cusenz made the post on his personal account outside of work hours.
In short, it is not enough that city employees pay lip service to political correctness during business hours. Their thoughts and words are subject to City Hall's control on their own time as well.
That is frightening.
I have no idea what Cusenz said on his own time and own dime.
I do know that censorship is dangerous.
I have also ceased to give City Hall the benefit of the doubt about anything they say and do, particularly in regard to Facebook postings.
This administration's judgment has been in the shithouse since Mayor Warren took over last year.
They are hypersensitive to any criticism, real and imagined, directed against it.
Accusations of racism have been their usual rebuttal to their critics.
Forcing Cusenz to take diversity and inclusion training before returning to his job overseeing daily operations at the 911 Call Center will not brainwash him.
It will demand political correctness of him in both his public and private lives.
It will teach him to keep his mouth shut in order to keep his job, and to watch what he posts on Facebook.
At least what he posts there under his own name.
Now the Warren Administration ought to hire a lot of spies, like they do in totalitarian dictatorships, to follow its employees around, to insure that they behave properly in public.
At least until they leave its employ.
Then, all Hell can break loose when they start talking about what really went on there.
What is clear is that City Hall is making political correctness an official policy for its employees to follow in work and out.
This is why they chose to inform the media. And name names.
Cusenz will be their test case. An example.
And that's why City Hall employees post so much pablum on their Facebook pages, praising the administration..
If they post anything about City Hall at all.

Friday, March 20, 2015

It was the battle of the Democratic Committee factions.
Ex police chief Jim Sheppard won the Democratic endorsement to run for LD 23 on Wednesday night.
He beat out Mitch Rowe by 56 to 13.
That is a considerable margin.
The candidates themselves are not particularly important in this instance.
The factions within the Democratic Committee each candidate represents are.
Sheppard is willing to Uncle Tom it for the white elitist Morelle-Clifford clique.
They won this early political round.
Rowe is the token white candidate offered up by the black oriented Gantt-Warren faction.
Rowe denied that he was their stooge, claiming that running in this campaign was his decision alone.
That might be true, but it is doubtful.
Rowe is employed by Mayor Warren's administration. If she had told him not to run, I doubt that he would have done so. He would at least need to have her tacit support. Or permission.
Rowe did have the support of his mother, City Councilwoman Carolee Conklin, who endorsed his race.
Conklin is not a member of either faction, and can be expected to do whatever is best for herself, or her children.
What mother wouldn't, regardless of how old her boy is?
Conklin promptly lambasted Sheppard at the endorsement meeting, reciting her son's perfections.
It did no good. A mother can protect a grown child only so long before it looks pathetic.
More telling is that Conklin's endorsement of her son was seconded by City Council president Loretta Scott, who is firmly entrenched in the Gantt-Warren camp.
That did no good, either.
Clearly, the delegates were not impressed with Mitch Rowe.
He lost. Badly.
Rowe hasn't decided to challenge Sheppard in a primary election.
Yet.
That will take more time, effort and money than he might be willing to spend on an election that isn't going to be a sure thing.

PARADOX

As I stated previously, LD 23 is one of the richest and whitest LDs in the City of Rochester. The Democratic Committee there willingly chose Sheppard, a black man, because the white elitist Morelle-Clifford clique will be pulling his strings.
They didn't choose the white Rowe because they felt he would be manipulated by the Gantt-Warren faction, whose greatest strength is in the ghetto.
Rowe's defeat is their first major political defeat since the mayor took office.
The mayor has yet to offer up a candidate to oppose Molly Clifford's run for City Council in the northwest district.
Perhaps the mayor isn't strong enough to tackle Clifford.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Rochester Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bolgen Vargas offered to drop his lawsuit against the School Board.
That suggests Vargas has a weak case, especially since it would have left the School Board's ruling intact.
That ruling stripped Vargas of some of his powers as superintendent.
In exchange, the School Board would extend his contract by two years. It expires next year.
That suggests that Vargas thinks the School Board is stupider than they are.
It is not the deal of the century, especially since they can't get along with each other.
I doubt that the School Board is entertaining notions of growing any older with Vargas at the helm of their sinking ship. They were probably not going to renew his contract when it expired at the end of the 2015 - 2016 school year.
So the School Board rejected Vargas' offer.
Vargas must now wait until April 4 to file his lawsuit against the School Board.
If he plans on pursuing the matter.
It won't shore up what's left of his reputation, but winning a lawsuit might just help his bank account.
There will be a lot of monkey business going on behind the scenes until that date.
Regardless of what happens, the Rochester City School District will still muddle along at the bottom of the barrel.

Saturday, March 14, 2015

It seems that at least one of Rochester's city councilmen has been reading my blog.
Carolee Conklin, who heads up the Finance Committee, has questions about why Mayor Warren needs to hire TransPro, an outside and out-of-state consulting firm.
Why the mayor's staff can't track their own programs.
And why the mayor needs to pay them nearly $80,000.
And why the mayor didn't choose the lowest bidder.
Two weeks ago, Chief of Staff Jeremy Cooney made vague, insufficient and inadequate statements about hiring TransPro.
In a mad state of hubris, neither the mayor nor he expected anyone to ask for further clarification.
They expected City Council to approve it without question.
That has been the usual procedure for City Council, so it was a reasonable expectation.
Only Conklin is asking for an explanation.
Before anyone elevates Conklin to heroine status over this issue, I must remind them that, on rare occasions, City Council does ask for clarification before granting the mayor's request.
This is to fool the public, to make them think that City Council is being diligent.
The request will be approved.
It's all part of the game of politics.
Carolee Conklin is an old hand at it.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

As part of the celebration of the Urban League of Rochester's 50th anniversary, ex mayor Bill Johnson will be presented with a key to the city.
I assume it's because of the work he is credited with doing when he headed that group before he became mayor of Rochester in 1993.
His three terms as mayor of Rochester benefitted him enormously, but were an unqualified disaster for Rochester.
His legacy of failures include High Falls, Midtown, the Fast Ferry, to name the most obvious ones.
They all cost the taxpayers millions.
The only notable monument to his twelve years as mayor is the tacky, multi-colored sign on the Inner Loop bridge over State Street that reads "Welcome to High Falls."
It might just as easily have read "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter."
The only notable success about Bill Johnson as mayor is that he was Rochester's first black mayor.
Bleeding heart liberals ooohed and aaahed over that.
He will be given the key to the city by Rochester's second black mayor, Lovely Warren.
She is therefore not unique in that respect.
Lovely Warren and her mentor, David Gantt, were opposed to Johnson running for mayor again during the special election in 2011. Johnson's campaign might have upset the deal Gantt claims he made with Tom Richards during that election so that Warren might run unopposed in 2013.
Ironic, isn't it?

Friday, March 6, 2015

Mayor Warren is not responsible for the weather.
It is not her fault that so much snow was dumped on Rochester.
It is not her fault that we have had weeks of near-zero and sub-zero temperatures.
The bitter cold prevented any appreciable melt downs between the numerous blizzards we have experienced.
That's why snow has been piling up on snow, leaving no place to put any new snow that falls.
It was the coldest February in Rochester's history.
If people want to blame anyone, they might as well blame God. If they believe in God.
But they haven't got the guts to do that.
He might get even with them.
So they blame the mayor and her crew.
The mayor has plenty of sins to answer for.
This isn't one of them.
But the morons keep on blaming the mayor.
They aren't blaming the assholes who park in the streets, especially narrower streets, even when they have driveways they could park in.
That's why the snow removal crews can't do as good a job as they might have.
Some assholes are probably afraid of having their cars plowed into their driveways, and don't want to shovel their driveways out.
So the snow removal teams have to move around them, burying their cars in snow.
They bitch, shovel their cars out and toss the snow back into the street, compounding the problem.
There are also plenty of assholes who throw the snow from their driveways into the street, then bitch about the streets not being plowed when they have a tough time maneuvering their vehicles through all the ruts their actions have created.
I believe that the situation has been reasonably well handled, given all of the circumstances involving this winter.
I have only one bit of advice to offer Norman Jones, the Commissioner of Environmental Services.
The next time we are hit like this, have the mayor order all cars off of the streets.
That's right, all of them.
Tow and ticket the cars that are left.
Then do a thorough plowing of the streets.
When the assholes complain, and they will, and threaten to move out of Rochester, let them.
Rochester has more than its share of assholes, anyway.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Dr. Bolgen Vargas is suing the Rochester School Board because he claims their recent attempted actions were a unilateral rewriting of his contract without his consent. Vargas' attorney said this would hamper his ability to perform his job.
That is an odd statement.
Neither Vargas nor the school board has been doing much of a job, except to preside over the worst school district in the state.
It is also one of the worst in the entire nation.
That's quite an accomplishment.
They are not ashamed of it.
The action I am referring to is to eliminate some of his non-union employees, the Superintendent's Employment Group.
SEG is an extraneous, expensive group of parasites.
What is more, larger school districts, such as Buffalo, have made do with fewer such employees.
Since these are non-union employees, Adam Urbanski hasn't offered his opinion about it.
If the school board is worried, they have nobody but themselves to blame.
They appointed Vargas to his quarter of a million dollar job.
He makes roughly twice what the mayor does.
The school board makes less than ten percent what Vargas does, for twenty hours of work per year.
The school board is elected by the voters.
The voters elect them based on race and ethnic background.
And the voters keep on re-electing them, no matter how miserably they have failed.
Which means that the voters are plenty stupid. Birds of a feather.
It will be the voters who will pay the legal fees involved in the lawsuit.
Vargas is probably looking to feather his nest before the axe falls and mayoral control of the schools is instituted.
Then, out he goes.
Why keep on a known and notable failure when mayoral control will be a controversial enough undertaking?
Or maybe Vargas is just looking to force the school board to buy out his contract.
He sat on the school board when they bought out Superintendent Janey's contract years ago.
Perhaps he learned something from that experience. Perhaps he's not as stupid as he usually sounds.
Vargas isn't answering any questions. He's allowing his attorney, Steve Modica, to do all of the talking for him.
That was a wise move,

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Mayor Warren's chief of staff, Jeremy Cooney, announced that she will be asking City Council for nearly $80,000.
The purpose is to hire Florida based TransPro Consulting to come up with a strategic plan to realize her goals.
TransPro is headed by none other than Mark Aesch.
Mark Aesch was formerly Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority CEO.
He left that in 2011.
And Rochester's bus system still sucks.
Not a good recommendation.
According to the D&C, Cooney said the effort would be led by a team from the Rochester area — not by Aesch himself.
Which makes me wonder why we need to hire him or his company at all.
Doesn't the mayor have enough qualified experts in her administration that could put her plans into action and track their success?
Apparently not.
Or the ones she has are not as good as their six figure incomes justify.
The D&C also quoted Cooney making some very vague statements about tracking, accountability and transparency.
You might want to read them yourself.
Perhaps he was quoted out of context, but the general feeling is that he was trying to make important sounding statements that didn't mean anything.
Or explain anything.
One thing is certain: Mayor Warren is concerned with creating jobs in Rochester.
In her own administration.
She needs a personal bodyguard to drive her everywhere. So she created the position and hired someone, amid all kinds of controversy.
She is currently in the process of creating an Office of Innovation, and hiring a Commissioner for that new department. That will also mean hiring a staff for him or her.
She resurrected two long discontinued offices, Special Projects and Chief of Staff, each of which require their own staff.
They had been discontinued because previous administrations had no need of them.
We still don't.
And the mayor says that she needs yet another organization to do what her staff should be doing already.
They don't know what or how they are doing.
Something is very wrong here.